This is the sound of my anxiety
The airplane takes off in 18 hours. Until then, I will be grading, handing marked exams off, fielding student enquiries, packing, filling out more immigration paperwork, cleaning, returning library books, finding 10 minutes to sleep, picking up passport photos and a student card, getting a haircut, and booking travel for January (it looks like January 10th may be the day of departure to points East).
Amidst my crazy day of errand running and marking, I took an hour off to trek to school to meet a student at 3:00. I figured I could mark papers on the bus, meet the student and mark on the way home. I was not happy to see that I not only forgot my red pen, but didn't, uncharacteristically, have any writing implements whatsoever on my person. No stationary stores en route to school, and the bookstore on campus was closed for some odd reason. It doesn't take an empath to see what happened next. No show. No, bloody, show. Despite having confirmed the meeting a mere 2 hours previously, the student who practically begged to meet me to discuss the exam, didn't bother to show up. I waited 20 minutes, then said fuck it. Of course, the type of student to blow off a meeting they requested is also the type of student to not even bother to write a note to say "oops, couldn't find your office" or other such lame excuse. Just nada. Good strategy for dealing with person responsible for your grade. My bus transfer was no longer valid when I got on the bus, but I was just not in the mood to pay one red cent more to get home. I think the driver got the message, as stormclouds starting forming on my face, and let me on for free. That's right pal, 5 minutes grace for the angry professor.
On the upside, I stopped at the local used bookstore and scored two new Ian Rankin novels for the flight: Black & Blue and the first Rebus book ever written, Knots & Crosses. I've been looking forward to Knots since I heard Rankin talk about it at Writer's Fest. As a young writer, he decided to research his first crime novel by calling up the police and asking questions of some of their CID officers. He outlined his story idea, about a serial killer at work in Edinburgh whose modus operandi was to leave a specific type of knotted cord on his victims. "Oh yeah", said the detectives, "come on down to the station and we'll show you the ropes". He went down to meet them, and they had him go to the interrogation room "just to get a real feel for the process". Then they asked him lots of questions about the particulars of his novel. "You daft bugger", said Rankin's dad, when he was told of how the young writer had spent his day, "they had you in the frame for a murder". Sure enough, some unsolved murders with a similar style of knotted cross had occured in Scotland, and the cops hadn't released the information to the public yet. They had been checking to see if Rankin might be their man.
Talk to you again when I'm here (pictures courtesy of Aarchiba):
Love,
GSH
Amidst my crazy day of errand running and marking, I took an hour off to trek to school to meet a student at 3:00. I figured I could mark papers on the bus, meet the student and mark on the way home. I was not happy to see that I not only forgot my red pen, but didn't, uncharacteristically, have any writing implements whatsoever on my person. No stationary stores en route to school, and the bookstore on campus was closed for some odd reason. It doesn't take an empath to see what happened next. No show. No, bloody, show. Despite having confirmed the meeting a mere 2 hours previously, the student who practically begged to meet me to discuss the exam, didn't bother to show up. I waited 20 minutes, then said fuck it. Of course, the type of student to blow off a meeting they requested is also the type of student to not even bother to write a note to say "oops, couldn't find your office" or other such lame excuse. Just nada. Good strategy for dealing with person responsible for your grade. My bus transfer was no longer valid when I got on the bus, but I was just not in the mood to pay one red cent more to get home. I think the driver got the message, as stormclouds starting forming on my face, and let me on for free. That's right pal, 5 minutes grace for the angry professor.
On the upside, I stopped at the local used bookstore and scored two new Ian Rankin novels for the flight: Black & Blue and the first Rebus book ever written, Knots & Crosses. I've been looking forward to Knots since I heard Rankin talk about it at Writer's Fest. As a young writer, he decided to research his first crime novel by calling up the police and asking questions of some of their CID officers. He outlined his story idea, about a serial killer at work in Edinburgh whose modus operandi was to leave a specific type of knotted cord on his victims. "Oh yeah", said the detectives, "come on down to the station and we'll show you the ropes". He went down to meet them, and they had him go to the interrogation room "just to get a real feel for the process". Then they asked him lots of questions about the particulars of his novel. "You daft bugger", said Rankin's dad, when he was told of how the young writer had spent his day, "they had you in the frame for a murder". Sure enough, some unsolved murders with a similar style of knotted cross had occured in Scotland, and the cops hadn't released the information to the public yet. They had been checking to see if Rankin might be their man.
Talk to you again when I'm here (pictures courtesy of Aarchiba):
Love,
GSH
posted by grad student hack at 8:31 PM
2 Comments:
Sorry about the asshat student. That is how it had to go, though. I mean, it just had to...
And I did end up getting an apology email the next day, much to my surprise. It could have been more full of groveling, but I accepted it nonetheless.
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